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Why Ruby is a Good Fit for the EnterpriseBy Darryl K. Taft
Why Ruby is a Good Fit for the Enterprise
The Ruby scripting language has drawn its share of both proponents and critics. However, Coupa Software, a spend management company that offers a cloud-based suite of financial applications, has standardized on Ruby as its development language of choice. In an interview with eWEEK Senior Editor Darryl K. Taft, David Williams, vice president of technology at Coupa, spells out why Ruby is a good fit for Coupa's enterprise offerings.
Why is Coupa primarily a Ruby and Rails shop?
Rails was the best functional and philosophical fit for what we were aiming to do when we started out in 2006, and it has scaled well with the company. Functionally, we fit the mold of a three-tier model-view-controller (MVC) Web application backed by a normalized relational database, and all of our integration with legacy systems is arms-length rather than at the database level. Given that, we fit the assumptions inherent in Rails' design, and, like any framework, Rails works best when the problem you're trying to solve with it matches what it's designed for. Rails wasn't the only MVC Web framework around at the time, however, so other factors came into play, particularly the philosophy around it and how well the tradeoffs matched what we needed. For us, the choice was mainly between Ruby on Rails and a couple of different frameworks written in Java. Rails' principles of "convention over configuration" and "don't repeat yourself," combined with the "magic" made possible by Ruby's dynamism, meant that with Rails we could build more features faster with fewer developers and less code. Since our whole tech stack was open source, and there weren't that many layers, if there was a problem that cropped up anywhere we could debug it quickly and fix it ourselves. We found that we were writing about one-tenth of the code that we'd need to write to do something similar in Java, and having less code to start with, meant that it was inherently easier to maintain.
I've heard you say that Ruby makes you happy as developers. Why is that? What is it about Ruby that makes you happy as compared to other languages.
Although Randall Munroe may have compared LISP to a light saber in one of my favorite xkcd comics (http://xkcd.com/297/), I feel like Ruby also fits. It's versatile; besides using it for our applications, I use it for shell scripts and one-liners that I might've used Perl for in the past. It's elegant—for example, blocks of code are first-class objects, and there's none of the primitive type vs. object and auto boxing/unboxing of Java. It's concise and expressive, in that it tends to read like English and isn't weighed down with excessive punctuation. It's extendable, both in that it's open source and in that it's easy to dynamically generate your own code or modify pretty much anything. Less concretely, when it surprises you, it tends to be for the better, meaning that as a developer you spend more time and energy on the problems you care about and less on catering to the language's own needs.
You also noted that your Ruby project is fairly large. What is considered large for a Ruby project? If you continue to grow, will that tax the system? What can you do to account for scale?
I haven't found any reliable statistics, so I can't be specific in terms of percentiles, but anecdotally, we're among the larger fairly monolithic Rails apps out there in terms of lines of code (more than 100,000) and number of instances (more than 1,000). The Rails framework popularized the Ruby language here in the US, so while I'm sure there are some large non-Web applications, most of the Ruby applications I'm familiar with are Web apps using the Rails or Sinatra frameworks.
Why Ruby is a Good Fit for the Enterprise
As far as scaling, that's a complicated question with a number of different answers, and it's one that varies significantly with the type of traffic you get. The short, generic answer is (1) throw hardware at it, (2) aggressively tune your most common and costly flows, (3) selectively degrade/limit particularly expensive features and (4) break things up into smaller chunks. As an enterprise SaaS app, our load tends to come not from simultaneous usage spikes as much as from power users manipulating large quantities of data at once. Also, since everything is dynamic and subject to encryption, customization and fine-grained security, typical consumer-facing scaling mechanics like CDNs and edge-caching aren't as relevant. If you look at a use case like Groupon's or Living Social's, for example, it's a lot different than ours. In aggregate, there's a lot of data, and they need to deal with a large number of simultaneous users, but each individual user is dealing with a fairly small amount that's common to many other people.
As we scale our business, we certainly, and fortunately, have some technical scaling to get ahead of as well, and we're taking a multi-tiered approach. We already shared instances and databases by customer, because there is pretty much no shared data between our customers, and we don't want there to be any possibility of comingling. Rails tends toward very minimal user sessions as a best practice, and we adhere to that, which helps make it possible to scale the front ends fairly linearly with additional hardware. In the short to medium term, a lot of what we are doing is tactical work on database queries and moving to newer versions of Ruby, Rails, and our database to take advantage of various performance and efficiency improvements. What may eventually drive moving to a more service-oriented and less monolithic architecture is wanting more separation internally to support a larger and more naturally segmented development team, but there's nothing inherent in even that big a change that would preclude using Ruby or Rails.
Does Ruby present any particular challenges for your team?
One challenge comes with Ruby's power and flexibility: It's possible to redefine and/or extend existing functionality easily, transparently, and in a number of different ways. Given that, individual developers have great power, and must exhibit concomitant responsibility. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's necessarily a good idea. Code reviews and established coding standards can help alleviate the concern and prevent problems.
In moving to Ruby 2.0, what features are you most interested in taking advantage of?
One particular feature, refinements, will further help narrow down the scope of a dynamic extension. This will make it easier for developers to ensure that their "local" changes to a shared piece of code aren't accidentally shared with other places in the code that don't need to take advantage of them. It's a bit obscure, but the end result should be fewer bugs and more freedom to upgrade components.
I'm also looking forward to the updates to memory management and the garbage collector in 2.0 and 2.1. The performance of a particular Ruby process depends on how often it has to stop to clean up discarded objects, and how long it takes to do that. After upgrading, we'll be using less memory for the Rails framework itself, and instances of our own objects should be collected more efficiently. This should mean better performance and higher throughput on a per-process basis.
Why Ruby is a Good Fit for the Enterprise
How secure is Ruby code?
In general, it's quite secure as long as you trust the code that you're running, which is true for us. Most Ruby implementations are open source, and tend to have a lot of eyes on them. There are standard reporting and patching protocols, and generally the right amount of transparency. It's a dynamic, garbage-collected language without explicit memory management, so it's far less prone to the kind of buffer overflow attacks that sometimes plague lower-level languages although, occasionally, something of the kind crops up in a C extension to a library.
For our purposes, security concerns are more around Rails, our application code, SSL [Secure Sockets Layer] and our hosting infrastructure, though I don't remember the last time we actually felt like we needed a patch to the language runtime itself. Rails, similarly, is open source, has a lot of eyes on it and has well-documented procedures in place for security concerns. We keep an eye on anything that comes up and assess it for relevance very quickly.
Is Ruby useful for big data applications?
Sure, at least in some cases. That's a very broad category. There are plenty of folks using Ruby (and often Rails) against a NoSQL database like MongoDB or Cassandra, and some that interface with frameworks like Hadoop through a RESTful API layer. Ruby as a language lends itself nicely to playing with semi-structured data, as it's quite dynamic and not strongly typed. When the data (or what you're doing with it) is a bit more structured and you need more throughput efficiency, it might make sense to choose something like Scala, but it all depends on what you're trying to do.
Does Ruby provide anything that helps with DevOps? Or is DevOps a language-agnostic issue? With the Coupa dev team removed from the main location, does that add to any DevOps issues?
I'd say it's language-agnostic to a certain extent, but the notion of infrastructure-as-code is strong within the Ruby and Rails communities. There are a number of good tools for handling different parts of deployments: Capistrano, Chef and Puppet are all written in Ruby, and are useful for managing Ruby and Rails applications. Similarly, there are a number of companies (Heroku, Engine Yard, New Relic, to name just a few) that host and monitor Ruby/Rails apps specifically.
Our own operations team may be two blocks away from much of our development team, but we still talk a lot. Like many even more distributed tech companies, we make heavy use of subject-specific chat rooms that let us work asynchronously. Face-to-face communication can make a difference, though, so now we have a small team on the development side that integrates with operations, and a couple of rotating developers that sit with operations day-to-day. I suspect we'll need more office space within 6 months, so who knows what our next configuration will look like, but this is certainly something we'll keep paying attention to. I'm agitating for telepresence robots, but the notion hasn't caught on yet.


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In an interview with Al Quds TV on Thursday, Hamas No. 2 Musa Abu Marzouk said "Hamas is willing to talk directly to the Israelis" regarding issues including Gaza border crossings and prisoner releases, according to Ibrahim Barzak, Hamas Says It's Ready For Direct Talks With Israel. Obtained by the Associated Press, in the taped interview, he said: "Just as you negotiate with weapons you can also negotiate by talk. Up till now our policy was no negotiation with (Israel), but others should be aware that this issue is not taboo." Israel has consistently said it will not talk directly with Hamas until the group recognizes its right to exist and renounces violence. Abu Marzouk insist the reason for considering take such steps reflects growing tensions with Abbas, whom Hams believes is trying to reclaim control of Gaza. He said, "Hamas finds itself compelled to make this move when the natural rights of the people in Gaza come under pressure from the Palestinian Authority and the government." Hamza Hendawi and Josef Federman report, Evidence growing that Hamas used residential areas, that evidence is mounting against Hamas militants regarding the use of residential areas as cover for launching rockets at Israel several times which Hamas now admits mistakes were made. According to the Associated Press, Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official in Gaza, said: "Gaza, from Beit Hanoun in the north to Rafah in the south, is one uninterrupted urban chain that Israel has turned into a war zone. The Israelis kept saying rockets were fired from schools or hospitals when in fact they were fired 200 or 300 meters (yards) away. Still, there were some mistakes made and they were quickly dealt with." According to Palestinian figures, 2,000 Palestinians died with three quarters of them civilians and more than 500 children included, while 11,0000 were wounded and 100,000 left homeless. On the Israeli side, seventy two people died including six civilians. Ahead of the U.N. investigation, the Israeli military released reams of evidence, including satellite photos and aerial footage, to support its claims that it acted appropriately and tried to minimize casualties, while Hamas made no effort to disguise its aim of maximizing Israeli casualties. Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, said, "Hamas' excuses are outrageous, misleading and contrary to the evidence supplied by the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) and the reality documented by international journalists on the ground in Gaza." A visit to the area uncovered three separate military sites possibly training grounds larger than a football field near state schools concealed from the street with barriers made of corrugated iron. Hamas restricted access to these areas making it impossible for photographers to enter the site and Israel confirmed that the areas were targeted in airstrikes. Another site identified by Israeli military as a rocket launching site is in northern Gaza near the new Indonesian hospital in close proximity to residential homes. The two Hamas military facilities are across the road to the west of the two story hospital which stands intact. Hamad, the Hamas official, said the buildings shown in Israeli videos were either a safe distance from the rocket launchers or the building were vacant during fighting. Bill Van Esyeld, a senior researcher at the Human Rights Watch, said: "I don't think there's any doubt urban areas were used to launch rockets from in the Gaza Strip. What needs to be determined is how close to a populated building or a civilian area were those rocket launches." Sami Abdel Shafi, a Palestinian American representing the Carter Center in Gaza, said: "Yes, Hamas and others may have used civilians as human shields, but was that consistent and widespread? The question is whether Israel's response was proportionate." The death toll and number of civilian deaths led to harsh condemnation of Israel and raised questions on the proportionality of Israeli's response causing Israel, in order to prevent an international investigation, on Wednesday to open its own criminal investigation into two high profile cases involving Palestinian civilian casualties. Hamas also has been sharply criticized for launching rockets aimed at Israeli cities and towns. Israel says its own civilian death toll would have been much higher had it not been for its rocket defenses. The U.N. Human Rights Council has appointed a commission to look into the latest fighting. Its report is expected no sooner than March.
While long standing peace could remain elusive for Gaza and progress is slow to say the least, Ukraine is taking steps forward to ensure peace in eastern Ukraine as Russia beefs up its military strategy. Laura Mills reports, Ukraine's President Pledges To Give The Country's East More Autonomy, Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko on Wednesday said he will introduce a bill next week offering greater autonomy to the pro-Russian east but rejects the idea of federalization that both Russia and the rebels want. During a televised Cabinet meeting, Poroshenko explained: "[the ceasefire deal reached] envisages the restoration and preservation of Ukrainian sovereignty over the entire territory of Donbas, including the part that is temporarily under control of the rebels. Ukraine has made no concessions with regards to its territorial integrity." Ukraine and the West both accused Russia of fueling the separatists with arms, expertise and its own troops, something Russia denies. In late August, NATO estimated more than 1,000 troops were operating on Ukrainian spoil and helping the rebels to turn the tide of the war in their favor. In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Wednesday for new sanctions against Russia that would deepen earlier penalties targeting Russia's energy and arms sectors and tighten Russia's access to International loans. Merkel told German parliament that the ceasefire improved the situation but there was "a lack of clarity on the fulfillment" of many other points of the peace plan. Ambassadors from EU nations were meeting Wednesday to discuss the sanction against Russia in Brussels. Poroshenko says since the agreement, 70 percent of the Russian troops in Ukraine have been withdrawn and 700 Ukrainian prisoners have been freed from rebel captivity with 500 more being freed by the end of the week. Mills reports: "Col. Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the Ukrainian National Security Council, told journalists that only 20 servicemen had returned home so far. In Donetsk, a rebel spokesman said a planned exchange of 36 soldiers from each side had been put off until Thursday, blaming the government for the delay. The cease-fire has been violated numerous times and Poroshenko accused the separatists of "provoking" Ukraine's troops. Ukraine says five servicemen have been killed and 33 injured since Friday. A volley of rocket fire was heard in the rebel-held city of Donetsk late Tuesday." In a statement carried by Russian news agencies, the leader of the rebels in Luhansk, Igor Plotnitsky, reacted to Poroshenko's commnets: "Neither we, nor our friends in Donetsk, are going to abandon the course to build our own state. A temporary cease-fire cannot cancel the results of the people's vote. People voted unanimously for the independence of our republics. There's no way back to the previous status." Other rebels have been in favor of a broad autonomy. Plotnitsky said the next round of talks between Moscow, Kiev, the insurgents and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is likely to discuss the status of the rebel-held areas. The Ukrainian public has been largely supportive of the war against the separatists. Peter Leonard reports, Ukraine, rebels exchange prisoners in peace deal, government and revel forces on Friday exchanged dozens of prisoners captured during fighting in Ukraine as part of a ceasefire agreement earlier this month outside the main rebel stronghold of Donetsk under the watch of international observers. Yurly Tandit, a negotiator for the government, said: "There is an ongoing process of talks. We are meeting each other's demands and fulfilling our promises." Meanwhile, Reuters reports, Russia Tests Nuclear Missile, Russia successfully tested their new Bulava intercontinental nuclear missile on Wednesday and will perform two more test launches in October and November, according to the head of its naval forces. The 12-meter long Bulava, or mace, has undergone numerous tests, some of which have failed, causing setbacks for the project that aims to be the cornerstone of Russia's nuclear arsenal over the next decade. Thomas Grove and Maria Tsvetkova report, Moscow stifles dissent as soldiers return in coffins, that 15 Russian soldiers were killed in Ukraine and hundreds more are in the hospital, according to human rights workers and military workers. A survey by pro-Kremlin pollster Fund of Social Opinions said 57 percent of Russians support the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk, but only 5 percent support an invasion of Ukrainian territory. Russian authorities have worked to systematically silence rights workers' complaints over soldiers' deaths, intimidating those who question the Kremlin's denials regarding Ukraine. Vladimir Isachenkov reports, Putin: Russia to focus on new offensive weapons, on Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin announced Russia is developing a variety of new nuclear and conventional weapons to counter the U.S. and NATO and weighing the cost to avoid overburdening its economy. Putin said potential threats must be analyzed and an adequate response given to avoid excessive military spending. In addition, he said Russian defense industries must rid themselves of dependence on imports and become capable of producing key components at home, referring to recent Western sanctions imposed on Russian arms sales. Russian West relations are at their lowest point since the Cold War with NATO deciding last week to create a rapid reaction spearhead force to protect Eastern Europe from Russian bullying. Meanwhile, Fred Westerbeke of the Dutch National Prosecutors Office told reporters that most likely the downing of MH17 in eastern Ukraine on July 17 was shot down as a separate Dutch air crash investigation concluded this week that the plane was hit from the outside by numerous high energy objects, according to Mike Corder, Shooting down of MH17 'most likely' scenario. Police chief Patricia Zorko said detectives are poring over 350 million webpages and thousands of photos and films that could contain evidence and are trying to authenticate intercepted phone conversations. Corder reports: "A highly placed rebel officer told the AP in an interview after the disaster that the plane was shot down by a mixed team of rebels and Russian military personnel who believed they were targeting a Ukrainian military plane. Intercepted phone conversations between the rebels released by the Ukrainian government support that version of events." Detectives and forensic experts are looking at 25 metal objects recovered from bodies and wreckage to see if any clues surface. Westerbeke warns the complex investigation is complex and time consuming comparing it to the Lockerbie bombing hat took years to identify suspects.
As the rebels and Ukraine government try to reach some sort of long lasting peace and stability internally and externally with Russia, the United Stated joined by other countries in their alliance try to wage war against an entity that has spread quickly throughout the Middle East and internationally through recruitment of foreigners to brutal battles. Julie Pace reports, Obama orders airstrikes in Syria for first time, President Barack Obama authorized U.S. airstrikes inside Syria for the first time Wednesday night with expanded strikes in Iraq as part of a "steady, relentless effort" to root out Islamic State extremists. In a prime time address to the nation from the White House, Obama declared: "We will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are. This is a core principle of my presidency: If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven." Obama announced he will send 500 more U.S. troops to advise and assist Iraqi security forces as well as conduction intelligence and reconnaissance flights, bringing the total number of American forces this summer to 1,500. He urged Congress to authorize a program to train and arm Syrian rebels fighting both the Islamic State militants and Syrian President Bashar Assad. He added: "But I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil." Officials said Obama plans to proceed with both broader airstrikes in Iraq and Syria without seeking new authorization from Congress as he is acting under a use of force authorization Congress passed in the days following 9/11 to give President George W. Bush the ability to go after those who perpetrated the terror attacks. Obama previously called for its repeal, but used it as support for strikes against terror targets in Yemen and Somalia. Pace reports: "Obama said his approach in Syria is modeled after those long-running U.S. counterterrorism campaigns. But it is different in important ways, starting with the fact that it marks the first time since 9/11 that a U.S. president has authorized the bombing of terror targets in another nation without seeking permission or at least notifying it in advance." House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, praised Obama for acknowledging the grave and growing threat that the Islamic State poses, but said Obama was coming to that conclusion too late. Boehner said: "He has finally begun to make the case the nation has needed him to make for quite some time: that destroying this terrorist threat requires decisive action and must be the highest priority for the United States and other nations of the free world."The White House wants Congress to include the authorization in a temporary funding measure lawmakers will vote on before they adjourn this month. Republicans have made no commitment to support the request and the House GOP has so far not included the measure in the funding legislation, while a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Nevada Democrat might opt to seek separate legislation. The White House announced Wednesday that it was also providing $25 million in immediate military assistance to the Iraqi government as part of efforts to combat the Islamic State. David Cohen, Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, wrote in a blog post that the U.S. would be working with other countries, especially Gulf states, to cut off the group's external funding networks and its access to the global financial system. The U.S. has been pressing allies in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere to help with efforts to degrade the terror group. Meanwhile, rebels, desperate and disenchanted, don't believe help will come from the West, blaming the United States and its allies for past failures when support was promised and not delivered allowing the rise of ISIS, according to Sophia Jones, Cash-Strapped Moderate Syrian Rebels Blame West For Rise Of Islamic State. The Islamic State has amassed considerable wealth from foreign donations, oil smuggling, extortion and hostage ransoms. They've taken control of crucial weapons warehouses and supplies, such as weaponry the U.S. gave to the Iraqi Army. In addition, the new found power has allowed them to gain support by setting up needed infrastructures and imposing order as well as strictly enforced rules such as bans on smoking, and mandates that women wear full-face veils. Jones reports: "Three and a half years into a devastating civil war that has ripped apart the country, Syrian fighters say that if something doesn't change they'll lose more and more moderate fighters to the Islamic State. As secular, moderate rebel groups face infighting, divisions and a lack of necessary equipment and training, some may be enticed by the rich and highly organized Islamic State. The group of fighters gathered in the Turkish border town said they usually make roughly $50 a month. But they've heard that Islamic State fighters can make $600 or more." As the rebels fight both the regime and Islamic State, they fear the threat of the jihadi group will cast a shadow over their efforts to curb the regime's grip on Syria. While the Islamic State beheads U.S. journalists and persecutes and kills religious minorities, the Assad regime continues to indiscriminately bomb civilian areas and likely is using chemical weapons against its own population.
Meanwhile, international, the U.S. tries to rally allegiance from neighboring countries int he Middle East and allies to fight the Islamic State casting a shadow on the 13 anniversary of 9/11. On Thursday, Key Arab allies promised to help in the fight against the Islamic State, but NATO member Turkey refused, Lara Jakes and Adam Schreck report, Arab allies pledge to fight Islamic state group. As the CIA doubled its assessment of how many fighters the extremist group can muster, the Arab states' endorsed the broad strategy to stop the flow of fighters and funding to the insurgents and to join possible military action. On Thursday, both Republicans and Democrats in Congress joined the President in his call to combat the militants after laying out his long term campaign to include expanding airstrikes against the fighters in Iraq, launching strikes against them in Syria for the first time and bolstering the Iraqi military and moderate Syrian rebels to allow them to reclaim territory from the militants. After a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in thr Red Sea city of Jiddah, 10 Mideast allies announced their backing for a strategy to destroy the group wherever it is. Kerry's visit, on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, was aimed at pinning down regional allies and so far 40 nations have agreed to contribute to what Kerry said would be a worldwide fight to defeat the group. Kerry said of the terror attacks on the U.S. 13 years ago: "The devastating consequences of extremist hate remain fresh in the minds of all Americans, and to so many of our friends and allies around the world. Those consequences are felt every day here in the Middle East." New intelligence assessments estimate the extremists have between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters across Iraq and Syria, up from a figure of 10,000, the CIA said Thursday. CIA spokesman Ryan Trapani said the new total reflects stronger recruitment by extremists since June, following battlefield successes and the group's declaration of an Islamic State or caliphate on territory under its control. On Friday, Larak Jakes reports, US, Turkey mull strategy against Islamic militants, the United States pressed Turkey to harden its borders against fighters and funding going to the Islamic State and sought clarity on how far Ankara is willing to go to help a world coalition to destroy the group. While Turkey sits on the front line battlegrounds of Iraq and Syria as it assists refugees and cracked down on cross border traffic from both countries, Turkey resist endorsing the new strategy as 49 Turkish citizens have been kidnapped including diplomats. At the start of a meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu cited "challenges and threats" in Iraq and Syria. Jakes reports: "It was the third meeting so far this month between Kerry and Cavusoglu, who also together participated in talks during the annual NATO summit in Wales and this week in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, about the Islamic State threat. Kerry said the two men also will chair a counterterrorism forum at the United Nations General Assembly at the end of September. But the U.S. is being careful to not push Turkey too hard as it grapples with trying to free its hostages. The Turks were kidnapped from their consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul when it was overrun by the Islamic State in June." In addition, American hostages are being held as payback for the 150 airstrikes that Washington has launched in Iraq since last month. Kerry said: "But I think for the moment, they have a few sensitive issues. We respect those sensitive issues, and we're going to work with them very carefully." Rachelle Blinder and Jonathan Lemire report, New terror fight casts shadow over 9/11 ceremonies, due to the growing threat of the Islamic State, a heavy cloud hung over the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks Thursday causing many to feel anxiety and determination in coming to ground zero to remember loved ones. The silence to mark the attack and the roll call of the nearly 3,000 lives lost came hours after President Barack Obama told the country he is authorizing expanded strikes in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State group. Vasile Poptean said as he left the ceremony, where he had gone to remember his brother, Joshua Poptean: "It's an ongoing war against terrorists. Old ones die out and new ones pop up. If we don't engage them now, there's a possibility there will be another 9/11 down the road." Victims' relatives and dignitaries gathers in the plaza where the twin towers stood and now where the soon to open 1,776 foot One World Trade Center stands to commemorate the attacks, while in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where former House Speaker Dennis Hastert gave the flag that flew atop the U.S. Capitol on 9/11 to the Flight 93 National Memorial, did the same. At the Pentagon, Obama spoke at the wreath laying ceremony without mentioning the rise of Islamic State extremists specifically, but noted: "We cannot erase every trace of evil from the world. That was the case before 9/11 and that remains true today."
As many try to heal old wounds and remember those they lost to what it seems is an endless war, the United Nations along with scientist this week had some good news about the health of the planet. Seth Borenstein reports, Scientists say the ozone layer is recovering, earth's protective ozone layer has begun to heal largely due to the phase out since the 1980s of certain chemicals used in refrigerants and aerosol cans, the U.N. scientific panel reported Wednesday. Scientists said the development demonstrates that when the world works together, it can counteract a brewing ecological crisis. For the first time in 25 years, scientists confirmed a statistically significant and sustained increase in stratospheric ozone shielding the planet from solar radiation that causes skin cancer, crop damage and other problems. Paul A. Newman, a NASA scientist and co-chaired the every four years ozone assessment by 300 scientist published by the United Nations, said from 2000 to 2013 ozone levels climbed 4 percent in key mid-northern latitudes at 30 miles up. The ozone layer has been thinning since the 1970s due to man made chlorofluorocarbons called CFCs which release chlorine and bromine destroying ozone molecules high in the air. After scientists raised the alarm, countries agreed to a treaty in 1987 that phased out CFCs allowing those chemicals to decrease between 30 and 50 miles up. The United Nations calculated in earlier reports that without the pact, by 2030 there would be an extra 2 million skin cancer cases a year around the world. Newman added that heat trapping greenhouse gases are also helping to rebuild the ozone layer as the cooler air caused by carbon dioxide and other gases increase the amount of ozone. MIT atmospheric scientist Susan Solomon said the chemicals that replaced CFCs contribute to global warming and are on the rise expecting that a dramatic increase will occur by 2050 and make a big contribution to global warming. The long lasting ozone eating chemicals still linger in the atmosphere creating a yearly fall ozone hole over the extreme southern Hemisphere and the hole hasn't closed up. By Newman's calculations, the ozone layer is still 6 percent thinner than in 1980. Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, said there are encouraging signs that the ozone layer "is on track to recovery by the middle of this century." He added: "More than 98 percent of the ozone-depleting substances agreed over time have actually been phased out. If not for such efforts, Steiner said, "we would be seeing a very substantial global ozone depletion today." Earlier this week, the United Nations announced that atmospheric levels of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, surged to another record high in 2013. The increase from 2012 was the biggest jump in three decades.

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Thursday, September 18, 2008
Blobs Of Peace
There are moments when I am transported into the full realization of just how dumb, as a human, I truly am. One such moment is when I look over and catch one of my dogs drinking water from his bowl, his tail wagging FURIOUSLY. He is ECSTATIC over drinking water. And I stand there riveted, humbled, enchanted. I want to drink water and wag my tail, man! I want that kind of living-in-the-moment, that kind of inner peace. Honestly though, I'm just not that great at the inner peace stuff. So then I was wondering, during my day-to-day nonsense, where ARE my daily moments when I'm actually in the moment and/or cultivating some peace? It's a sad little list:
-The first sip of my morning latte. Aka, the a.m. mouthgasm. OH IT BURNS too, and in a good way. There is no better investment than a good espresso machine. It's the first step toward World Peace. They say it begins at home people. Well, I'm telling you - it begins with a latte.
-Here comes the usual freakdom: smelling my dogs' necks, ears, breath. JUST love it. My dogs just smell so damn adorable, it's ridiculous. I should bottle it and sell it. I'd totally make 2 dollars.
-Hiking. I hike 2-3 times a week and this usually helps me actually notice there is nature outside my door and not just cars, laptops, mail, phone calls, and jerks.
-Baking. Because I'm really quite a scattered baker, I absolutely must concentrate when I'm baking - so I'm often in-the-moment while baking, which can be kind of lovely. Unless it goes wrong, which it often does - and then I just feel like a total ass for concentrating so completely yet still failing miserably. Hmmm, so maybe it's not so peaceful? Where am I going with this? Do we even care?
-Reading. I like to read every night before bedtime. Love how it makes me feel cozy and peaceful and sleepy. Except when the ceiling fan above me is turned on high (too early, that is) and it dries my eyes out completely and I can't even read anymore! Then, buzzkill. Wide AWAKE! See, now why did I have to add that last part? This entire post is just going to shit before our eyes, isn't it?
Okay, see why peace is so tough to pursue? What a sucky list indeed. I used to do yoga quite regularly, meditate, and write a little positive grateful-something each night in a journal. I'm just feeling off track here, big surprise. It makes me curious: what do other people do to ensure some dang peace and serenity in their lives? I suppose the first step might be to not call it dang peace. Oh self, how did you think of that?
So with all this thinking about peace, I really could not resist making Dorie Greenspan's World Peace Cookies. I'd been wanting to try them for months and it seemed the perfect time had arrived.
World Peace Cookies
First of all, if you don't own Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home To Yours, I will pray to the Dalai Lama for your souls - past, present, and future. This is, by far, my favorite cookbook for baking - and actually, my favorite cookbook, period. I can't even begin to tell you what a great resource it is for everything baking, how beautiful it is, and how wonderfully it's written - just a fabulous book. These chocolaty cookies are delicious; kind of like a sandy, flat brownie with a bit of soft crunch and nubs of chocolate goo here and there. Now, if that can't foster world peace, what can?
1 1/4 AP flour
1/3 c. cocoa powder
1/2 t. baking soda
11 T unsalted butter, room temp.
2/3 c. light brown sugar
1/4 c. sugar
1/4 t. fine sea salt
1 t. vanilla
3/4 c. mini chocolate chips
Sift flour, cocoa, baking soda together. In a bowl, beat butter on medium speed until soft and creamy. Add both sugars, salt, and vanilla and beat for 2 minutes. Turn off mixer. Add sifted dry ingredients, pulsing at low speed to avoid flying flour. Once flour has combined a bit, continue to mix at low speed for about 30 seconds, just until flour disappears into the dough; dough may be a bit crumbly. Toss in chocolate pieces and mix only to incorporate.
Turn dough out onto a work surface, gather it together and divide it in half. Shape each half into logs that are 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Wrap logs in plastic wrap and place in fridge for at least 3 hours.
Center a rack in the oven, preheat to 325F, and line 2 baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.
Slice logs into rounds that are 1/2 inch thick; if rounds crack a bit as you slice, no worries - just pinch the bits back onto each cookie. Arrange the rounds on the baking sheets, leaving 1-inch between them. Bake one sheet at a time for 12 minutes - they won't look done and won't be firm, which is perfect! Transfer baking sheet to cooling rack and let cookies rest until just warm - then serve, or allow to come to room temp. Makes about 36 cookies. ENJOY!
26 comments:
- NV said...
WOW! Those would be sooooo good with the special tea I have planned for later ...
- September 18, 2008 at 2:47 PM
- Clumbsy Cookie said...
I'm in peace after seeing those! I share the latte peace with you. I'm in peace when I look trhu my window and see the great beautiful sea ahead. I'm in peace when I visit your blog. I'm a peace bitch I think.
- September 18, 2008 at 4:02 PM
- Adam said...
I always dig your stories, Ann. They are always thought provoking, but yet I always end up laughing a lot too. 2 dollars for puppy smell? You could totally ask for $3.50
Things that put me in peace:
-Reaching a new PR in the weightroom
-Playing bass really loud
-Going for a walk at night
- September 18, 2008 at 5:24 PM
- flutter said...
mmmmmmm blobs
- September 18, 2008 at 6:46 PM
It's a very respectable peace list, nothing sad here. I really need to start reading at night again. What a great way to end the day.
I do have to say your blobs look nothing like blobs. They are perfectly shaped and of course they're stacked super neat. But don't worry, I know blobs and I can teach you. ;)
- September 18, 2008 at 8:19 PM
- Sugar Jones said...
Coffee, Hiking, and Reading are on my list. Baking isn't. As much as I want to taste your cookies, I think I'll just go eat the new Kashi Oatmeal Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies!
Cheers to the burning mouthgasm, sister!
- September 18, 2008 at 10:36 PM
- Real Live Lesbian said...
Sitting on the porch with a latte watching the dogs sniff the hell outta some critter that walked through the yard a month ago.
It's the little things.
Oh and my "Annfast." That's what I'm calling it. ;)
- September 19, 2008 at 7:58 AM
- dharmamama said...
Nubs of chocolate goo... nubs of chocolate goo... I have everything I need to make these! Glory.
For years, I've been cultivating inner peace - it started with, of all things, an acid trip many years ago... getting that glimpse of "all one" made me hungry for more of the same - without the hallucinogens. For me, today, it all comes down to breathing. Three deep breaths in the midst of anything brings me right to center, which IS peaceful. I won't tell you how I found that center, it would take up your whole blog for weeks - but it's there!
I know you know that.
Oh, and to maintain it? I had to give up coffee. I'm sorry. But I did. And I've given it up over 25 times. Then I go back. Then I lose center. Then I give it up. Then I read mouthgasm and go back...
- September 19, 2008 at 8:34 AM
- grace said...
i agree with your list almost 100%. replace dog smell with my fella's cologne, and i'm there. :)
your cookies appear to be perfect, and I imagine that sinking your teeth into one would definitely give you a sense of peace. :)
- September 19, 2008 at 9:07 AM
I'm quite eclectic with my peace gathering habits. I like to write poetry/lyrics, and then I like to sit on the toilet, lock the door so that I can get some god damn alone time for fuck's sake, and then I like to open a book and read.
Too much info? Yes.
Do I care? Not really.
- September 19, 2008 at 9:41 AM
- YD, sometimes with ♥June and ♥Angel Samantha said...
Usually in the morning after I brush my teeth and do what I need to do in the bathroom, I like to spend 5-10 minutes sitting on the couch just patting the dogs(they would be sitting next to me, one on each side). That moment is very peaceful to me.
- September 19, 2008 at 10:22 AM
- Laura said...
I love those cookies. I think you have plenty of peaceful moments--maybe it is the toddlers, maybe it is me, but I am not sure I have more than 2 moments max per day in the moment. And one of them is reading before bed for me too in which case oh yeah, no sleep for me.
Thank god for football season, when I get 3 hours plus in the moment every Saturday. :)
- September 19, 2008 at 6:13 PM
- hungryandfrozen said...
Aw, hope you find that moment of sanctuary sometime soon - preferably a sanctuary with repeatability! Sure a health spa would be pleasant but who can go to one of them weekly? (unless you're Posh Spice. But I digress.)
I like to drink tea...which calms me like THAT...or miso soup. And yoga is great. I don't know what it is about putting your ears behind your knees but it really makes me feel good.
- September 19, 2008 at 11:08 PM
Those cookies sound so yummy but I don't think the scale would like me very much if I made them !
As for peace it's definately my evening bubble bath. It's divine.
- September 20, 2008 at 9:58 AM
Well, after a few moments of reading your post.... I'm smiling and seriously reconsidering my attack on the neighbors. Why attack the neighbors? Because, because, because... I don't have an espresso machine. Ding dang, I love kitchen gadgets. Tell me... oh please... does it whir? I love gadgets that whir.
- September 21, 2008 at 4:49 AM
- MamaGeek @ Works For Us said...
Ann, I'm guessing you could even make your dog's water look AWESOME!
And I heartcha for you hearting your dog. Me too! Me too!
- September 21, 2008 at 6:20 PM
- John D. said...
NOT a sad little list at all. Rather enlightened, I would say. It's the every moment things that enrich our lives if we learn to truly pay attention to them. I KNOW this (I know it through and through) and yet, it's still so easy for me to disregard this vital information about living a contented life. How very unenlightened of me when I do that. I believe that you re doing very well, my sweet friend. : )
And you know, I have cats and it gives me the greatest pleasure to watch the drink too (I think to myself, "drink, babies, drink." I've heard other people say his as well. Must be something about the most primal maternal/paternal loving instincts projected toward our animals. : ))
- September 22, 2008 at 3:06 PM
- Gigi said...
these are all time favorite cookies! swear! great post ann.
- September 24, 2008 at 12:05 AM
- Amy of Sing For Your Supper said...
I love these cookies - they were the very first recipe I made when I got Dorie's book! SO good!! Yours look fantastic!
- September 24, 2008 at 11:12 AM
Seriously, I am SO with you on the dog thing. Puppies = peace. That should be a bumper sticker or something.
- September 24, 2008 at 3:45 PM
- scrappysue said...
can't wait to try these!
- September 25, 2008 at 10:11 PM
Giveaways at my blog!!!!
- September 26, 2008 at 7:40 PM
lovely cookies. they're putting me at peace and yet turning me on at the same time. i hven't actually got a dorie greenspan cookbook. everyone raves abt it and i've tried a couple of recipes on the internet. they're good - but i haven't seen the book anywhere!!! x
- October 6, 2008 at 11:57 PM
- January 4, 2010 at 9:06 AM
- Dharmamama said...
I have this recipe saved as "chocolate goo nubs". LOL Pulled it up today and thought of you.
- June 24, 2011 at 2:45 PM
"Because I'm really quite a scattered baker, I absolutely must concentrate when I'm baking - so I'm often in-the-moment while baking, which can be kind of lovely. Unless it goes wrong, which it often does - and then I just feel like a total ass for concentrating so completely yet still failing miserably."
You know that feeling, when you're shocked to hear words that belong to YOU coming out of someone else's mouth? I'm feeling that in SPADES right now. It feels really nice, actually, to know that someone else is crazy enough to go through that thought process as well! xD
- April 9, 2013 at 11:51 PM


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Sister Olive Lilian Creswell Haynes
Australian Army Nursing Service, AIF
Olive Lilian Creswell Haynes was born in Adelaide on 7January 1888 to Reverend James Crofts Haynes and Emma Haynes (née Creswell). She was educated at Tormore House in North Adelaide, where she developed early interests in the arts and social issues. Beyond her keen interests in reading, music, and sometimes painting, she also developed a strong concern for the lives and welfare of others. In October 1909 she began three years of training as a nurse at Adelaide Hospital. Upon finishing, she worked at the hospital as a charge nurse from February to December 1913. Haynes spent the following months working as a private nurse and travelling until she enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service in August 1914, aged 26.
Haynes departed from Adelaide on 26 November 1914 for Melbourne, where she boarded the SS Kyarra on 5 December. Following a stopover in Fremantle, Western Australia, Kyarra arrived in Alexandria on 13 January 1915. A week later, Haynes began duty with No. 2 Australian General Hospital (2 AGH) at Mena House, previously a tourist hotel. The initial months were not particularly busy, though there were increasing cases of smallpox, measles, pneumonia and later cholera.
The real test for Haynes came in late April when casualties from the Gallipoli landings began to arrive. On 29 April she recorded in her diary: 'over 2,000 landed at Alexandria'. 2 AGH became so overcrowded that in May a second hospital was opened in the nearby Ghezireh Palace Hotel. For the next four months, staff ferried between the two sites, struggling to contend with continual arrivals of several hundred cases at a time. In addition to wounded soldiers, many were victims of the typhoid and dysentery spreading through the trenches. Their infections were exacerbated by the severe heat and the huge numbers of flies. Haynes described a '[g]hastly smell like decomposing mummies' in the hospital. In a letter to her sister on 16 July, she wrote:
We got 300 more in today, so now we have about 600 between the two of us [Mena and Ghezireh]. They can't sleep for the heat and wander about and smoke and scratch; the sandflies are beyond anything.
Long and arduous shifts in these conditions took their toll on the insufficient staff. On 25 May, Haynes recorded:
On all day … Hotter and hotter. The insects are the limit. Night duty tonight at 12.00. I'm sure I'll never get up. Never felt so tired in my life.
Although granted one week of respite in Alexandria from 2 to 9 August, she returned to the massive casualties from the August offensive on Gallipoli. On 11 August she wrote, 'Another convoy 400 … Didn't get off until 2.30 am – on again at 7.00 – very busy.' Overworked and weak, many nurses also became ill – Haynes referred to a number of sisters who died from infections such as septicaemia.
As the offensive concluded, Haynes elected to transfer to the island of Lemnos. After enjoying a day of leave to shop at bazaars, visit the zoo, and dine at the popular Groppi restaurant in Cairo, she left Egypt aboard SS Assaye on 15 September.
Haynes landed at Mudros, the central harbour at Lemnos, on 18 September 1915. Located less than 100 kilometres from the Gallipoli peninsula, Mudros had become a major staging and medical base for the campaign. Although conditions at Lemnos had improved slightly since No. 1 Australian Stationary Hospital's arrival in March, they were still austere in September. Haynes joined No. 2 Australian Stationary Hospital and found serious shortages in tents and beds as hospital ships with up to 700 casualties arrived at the harbour. She observed 'poor old chaps lying everywhere', suffering further because of inadequate water supplies and terrible sanitation. Haynes herself endured ramshackle tents, half rations and ailments such as neuralgia, lumbago and dysentery.
Conditions only worsened as winter approached, bringing with it severe winds and rain. The 1915 November and December blizzards caused particular hardships, as well as a surge in the number of frostbite victims from Gallipoli.
Listen to Sister Haynes describe, in her diary entries and letters home, the privations she suffered as a nurse on Lemnos and the treatment of frostbite victims:
Owing to the successful evacuations of Gallipoli in December, work for Lemnos medical staff eventually eased. Haynes left for Egypt on 15 January 1916. After two months of comparatively quiet work at Ghezireh and Heliopolis, and three welcome days of leave at the Luxor Hotel, on 26 March she embarked on HMHS Braemer Castle for Marseilles to support troops on the Western Front.
Haynes spent the next two months in Marseilles with 2 AGH. With the exception of a spate of smallpox in mid-May, work was steadier here, and when not nursing she enjoyed occasional leisure time and the coastal countryside. She also made great use of her gramophone, which became a treasured source of entertainment and comfort both for her and her patients. In a letter to her mother on 14 April, she explained how 'The men simply love it, and I have to promise it days ahead to different huts and tents.'
Haynes' time in Marseilles contrasted with her next placement, in Boulogne, where she joined No. 13 Stationary Hospital (13 SH) on 14 June. Within days of commencing work there, she recorded arrivals of up to three convoys in one day flooding into the hospital. Large numbers of casualties continued to arrive for weeks, and many suffered from particularly severe wounds. In a letter to her parents on 16 July, Haynes wrote:
Convoys of wounded coming in all the time and, poor dears, they are so badly wounded … Both legs, an arm, head and back [wounds] all on one man is quite common, and such a lot dying.
In another letter to her mother, she explained that 13 SH received 'all the worst wounds' because it specialised in surgical cases:
They have a special Jaw Ward here, where they have all the smashed-up faces, and really they do wonders. They have a special French sculptor – most frighteningly clever – who makes new jaws and noses and faces.
In August, Haynes was transferred from Boulogne to aid the newly established No. 2 Australian Casualty Clearing Station (2 ACCS). Situated close to the front line at Trois Arbres, 2 ACCS was very vulnerable to enemy attacks. On 25 August, soon after her arrival, Haynes wrote to her mother:
We had a bit of excitement the other morning picking up bits of shell and shrapnel which landed just outside the tent … The aeroplanes are always flying around here above us and, as soon as the Germans spot them, they open fire and we do the same when theirs appear. There is a huge gun (14 ins.) just near us … when it fires the windows smash in the houses around and everything shakes.
Only days later the hospital's war diary recorded:
Half a shell from one of our anti-aircraft guns landed just outside camp in field … applying for helmets for personnel.
While at 2 ACCS, Haynes also first spoke of having to deal with the deaths of her patients, many of whom she had become close to. In a letter to her mother on 12 September, she wrote:
They call dying 'going west' … We always write to their mothers if they die. I have had some of the sweetest letters from the poor mothers … it is so sad to see them die … You'd give anything or do anything to save them.
Harrowing moments were not confined to the hospital. In another letter to her parents on 24 October, she wrote:
Sister Dickson and I had such a sad experience the other day … we heard a machine gun and, looking up, saw a Bosch aeroplane firing on the Observation Balloon, and it sent a bullet … bang – into the balloon, and in two seconds the whole thing was on fire and coming down. It made us feel sick to watch it … We hurried to the fallen balloon in time to see the officer put on a stretcher … It did give us a shock, as he was the very officer who had asked us to tea. He died about five minutes after … It was so sad. He was only about 21, and such a nice man … These things happen every day up this way, we know, but it's different when you see it and anyone you know.
But Haynes also had some good fortune during this period. In early December 1916 her diary first made reference to an Australian soldier named Pat, later explained to be Norval Henry 'Pat' Dooley. After frequent entries in the following weeks about their time spent together, Haynes wrote to her parents on 30 December that she and Dooley were engaged. Their relationship would continue throughout the war, through written correspondence and occasional meetings in France and England.
After two weeks of leave in London during January 1917, Haynes moved on to Wimereux to work again with 2 AGH. Now located near Boulogne, 2 AGH was a large central hospital which treated thousands of patients and evacuated many back to England. Haynes remained there until the end of the year, observing at first hand the developments on the Western Front. On 8 June, the day after the allied success at Messines, she wrote:
The news has been great the last two days. The men are coming in all the time and they are very bucked. The Irish and the New Zealand[ers] reckon they pulled this last stunt off. Of course, the Aussies helped.
However, she and 2 AGH soon faced casualties arising from initial stages of the terrible fighting at Ypres and Passchendaele. She wrote to her mother on 19 August, '[w]e are very busy again. Kept going pretty well all the time'. Medical staff were among the victims she treated. Haynes explained:
Fritz has been very busy shelling the C.C.S.'s [Casualty Clearing Stations]. Ever so many Sisters have been wounded and some killed. There were a few brought up the other day and one has lost an eye and the other eye has almost gone.
Haynes herself experienced serious enemy fire at 2 AGH. By September 1917, evening bombings around the hospital were frequent, forcing staff to work in darkness in an attempt to remain concealed. In a letter to her mother towards the end of month, she wrote:
Fritz … came over again tonight. Some raid, too – bombs were dropping like one thing and guns going and shrapnel dropping on the roof. The poor patients, naturally, got the wind up.
She ended the letter by noting, 'I am sending my will home, as we are supposed to make one.'
Haynes had a reprieve of sorts when she fell ill with bronchitis in October, leaving 2 AGH for treatment at the nearby No. 14 British General Hospital. By November, she had recovered and was transferred to Britain, where she spent several days on leave before joining the 3rd Australian Auxiliary Hospital in Dartford. Just a month later, on 11 December, she and Pat Dooley were married in Oxford. For Haynes, this meant that she would soon have to return home to Australia – at the time, women who married during active service were forced to resign from the AIF.
After the war, Haynes and Dooley started a life together in Melbourne, Victoria, Dooley's home town. Over the next 60 years they raised a family of seven children and 17 grandchildren. Their home in Ivanhoe became known for its open doors to those in need, particularly during the Great Depression. Frequently they offered shelter, meals, and money to men who had lost their jobs, homes or health. Haynes also provided free medical assistance in the neighbourhood.
Haynes pursued a number of projects beyond the home. Perhaps most notably, she was instrumental in establishing a school for people with intellectual disabilities at Ivanhoe, in north eastern Melbourne. Their second daughter, Phyll, had Down Syndrome, and rather than concealing the condition Haynes encouraged open and strong support. Around 1940, she and another mother of children with intellectual disabilities began a small 'school' in their own homes, which came to accommodate 12 children. The school provided great support not only for the children, but also for their parents, and raised awareness about intellectual disabilities in the community. In the late 1940s the school moved to St George's Sunday School Hall, in Ivanhoe East. From there it evolved rapidly, growing in size and gaining more experienced teachers. In the early 1950s it became the Helping Hand Association in Heidelberg, eventually catering for 60 children. In 1976, it developed into the Ivanhoe and Diamond Valley Centre for Intellectually Disabled Adults. For the rest of her life, Haynes continued to support the Centre with various fundraising activities.
Haynes' work at the school was accompanied by a range of other voluntary roles. She worked full-time assisting war efforts during the Second World War – repairing and classifying books with the Australian Comforts Fund, rolling bandages for the Red Cross, and acting as a Voluntary Aid Detachment member with the Women's Hospital. She also worked with Save the Children, and was active in fundraising for the church. Her efforts coordinating raffles, fêtes, and donating goods continued to within months of her death. Haynes died on 10 April 1978, aged 90, and her husband Pat just five months later.
Australian War Memorial, Australian Imperial Force unit war diaries, 1914-1918 War, AWM4 Subclass 26/63 - No 2 Australian Casualty Clearing Station
Bassett, J 1992, Guns and Brooches: Australian Army Nursing from the Boer War to the Gulf War, Oxford, Melbourne
Butler, AG (ed.) 1930, Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services in the War of 1914-1918, vol. I, Australian War Memorial, Melbourne
Butler, AG (ed.) 1940, Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services in the War of 1914-1918, vol. II, Australian War Memorial, Melbourne
Harris, K 2011, More than Bombs and Bandages: Australian Army Nurses at Work in World War I, Big Sky Publishing Pty Ltd, Newport
National Archives of Australia: Australian Imperial Force, Base Records Office; B2455, Olive Lilian Creswell Haynes' First Australian Imperial Force personnel dossier, 1914-1920; HAYNES O L C SISTER, 1914-1920
Young, M (ed.) 1991, 'We are here, too', 2nd edn, Australian Down Syndrome Association Incorporated, Adelaide
Thank you for your devoted service R.I.P
Thank you for your bravery to sacrifice your life for the country. We thank you for freeing us. Lest We Forget.
So young and brave to endure discomfort and deprivation and keep helping dying and wounded; an example to modern women of duty and perseverance. Go Olive!
Thanks for helping the men in war, especially the disabled. I am encouraged by your willingness to help everyone in the most difficult of situations.
Thank you for helping the injured. Thank you for helping everyone in need, especially the disabled. Thank you for your service.
Good on you Sister x
I never cared much before I read this page. I think the sisters are amazing now.
Thank you for your service. You have inspired me.
What a wonderful Australian woman. Thanks to her for her service. I am so glad you had a long happy and successful life. Thanks.
lily vanderheude
Thank you for your help. RIP.
Frankie was here.
Hi, have a great day!
Dear Sister Olive Haynes, I heard and read your story. Oh what it must have been like. You are such a brave woman. Maya.
XOXO Rest in peace.
I was very moved by this story. Thank you for sharing.
julie francis
Thank you for doing this for us.
marie cecile g...
Thank you for looking after me. Great holiday. See you in the Seychelles, much love.
Thank you for all you did through your life, both overseas in the war, and at home. Thank you for your example and legacy.
Thank you for your services as a nurse for the Australian soldiers. It must have been awful to have seen all of those hurt people. But good job on saving all those lives.
michael pritchard
sharron burdon
Thank you for helping our soldiers.
You are pretty cool and brave.
You are a very nice person for helping other people.
Sister Olive, thank you. You worked so hard for those soldiers and saved lives.
Hello I'm Keisha, thanks.
Loved the story. R.I.P
Thank you for helping the soldiers.
Never forgotten.
To all the medical personnel, I salute you for your bravery and sacrifice.
Good job for helping all of the men that got hurt or injured. You are really brave and strong. It would have been really hard.
Thank you.
Lori Parcheta
Wow, where do you begin? Those nurses were courageous and compassionate putting their own personal safety at risk. Amazing role models for the young women of today.
Bravo ladies!!
You exemplify courage.
Thank you. Lest we forget.
Lest we forget. Thank you for your service.
Thank you for risking your life for us today. Efforts of all those people including you so thank you so much.
Good job.
Good job.
We will always be thankful to the nurses for their hard, tireless work and dedication in times of need.
Rest in peace.
Thanks for helping the soldiers.
Thank you for what you did.
It was a great service you gave and very glad you survived.


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Want to learn more about hardwood flooring? Need information on how long hardwood flooring takes to acclimate? Find answers to those questions and more below.
Hardwood flooring is any flooring product made of real wood sawn from timber and manufactured for use as a floor. Hardwood is available in a wide variety of different tree species and can be manufactured as solid hardwood (the planks consist of one solid piece of wood sawn from a single timber) or as engineered hardwood (planks are made from multiple layers of wood adhered together). Hardwood flooring can come in planks, strips, parquet patterns, and other shapes. Generally, hardwood products come prefinished from the factory with stain and a wear layer to protect it, but in some cases, the wood is installed without a factory finish and the finish is applied onsite. Some hardwood floors can be sanded or screened and refinished overtime to return a more pristine look and feel, however, this process can be expensive, time-consuming, and messing. As a result, the practice of sanding/screening and refinishing is becoming less common as consumers more often opt to replace older and worn out hardwood floors with entirely new ones.
Hardwood floors typically feature a tongue and groove construction so that the planks lock together. Hardwood floors are often nailed or stapled into the subfloor for installation. In some cases, engineered wood may be glued to the subfloor. Before installing any hardwood floor a moisture test must be done to ensure the moisture rising from the subfloor does not warp or damage the floor after installation.
Most manufacturers recommend that any hardwood product be acclimated in the space that it will be installed for no less than 72 hours. It is also important to arrange the hardwood boxes for acclimation in a way that would give equal airflow to all of the boxes, ensuring each box of wood gets the same level of acclimation. Generally stacking the boxes no more than 4 high and with at least 6" of space around all sides will suffice.
No, you should not steam clean hardwood floors. Cleaning your hardwood floors with a steam cleaner or with excess moisture will damage your floors and cause them to warp. In many cases using a steam cleaner on your floors will void their warranty. Always consult the warranty guide for your floor before using any cleaning products. Some steam cleaner manufacturers may boast that their products are safe to use on hardwood floors (with the disclaimer that the floors must be properly sealed) but both the Wood Floor Covering Association and the National Wood Floor Covering Association do not recommend using steam cleaning products on hardwood. There are also no major hardwood floor manufacturers that recommend using steam cleaners on hardwood floors. Refer to the manufacturer of your floor or to your local Flooring America/Flooring Canada for other cleaning options that would be appropriate for your floor.


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Verizon Wireless recently announced the HTC Droid Incredible 2 smartphone. This handset is the successor of the the popular HTC Droid Incredible smartphone. It runs on the old Android 2.2 (Froyo) Operating System and comes with a 4 inch Super LCD display, Wi-Fi mobile hotspot, 8 megapixel camera with HD (720p) video recording and more. This handset will be exclusively available on the airwaves of Verizon Wireless in the US. Check out the specs below.
HTC Droid Incredible 2 features a 4 inch Super LCD touchscreen display with 480 x 800 pixels resolution, 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, Android 2.2 (Froyo) OS, HTC Sense UI, Wi-Fi, 3G Connectivity, 8 megapixel camera with dual LED flash, HD (720p) video recording, 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera and so on.
Other features include a 3.5mm headset jack, 1.1 GB ROM, 768 MB RAM, MicroSD card slot, 32 GB expandable memory, Bluetooth, A-GPS, Wi-Fi mobile hotspot, integrated noise cancellation technology and SRS WOWHD surround sound.
HTC Droid Incredible 2 is a global ready Android smartphone, which means that, it has both CDMA radio for operation on Verizon's network in the US and GSM/HSPA radio for operation in more than 200 countries. This handset will be available for purchase from April 28th. HTC Droid Incredible 2 comes with a price tag of $199.99 with a two years service agreement.


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DescriptionScene 1
Violetta Valéry, a radiant and well-to-do Parisian courtesan, who seems to have fully recovered from a serious illness, is giving a festive party attended by many prominent personages in high society. Gastone, one of her host of admirers, introduces Alfredo Germont, who has long worshipped her from afar. Alfredo sings a toast in praise of love, to which Violetta responds by extolling a life given over solely to pleasure. But as she bids her guests join in the dancing she is racked by a sudden spasm of coughing and giddiness. Alfredo avows his love, and though Violetta cannot at first bring herself to believe that he is in earnest she is deeply touched by his declaration. However, she makes it clear to him that she can only offer friendship, not love; and handing him a camellia she tells him that when it begins to droop he may come to her again. Left alone, she is assailed by misgivings about her past life: perhaps she is beginning to fall in love with Alfredo after all?
Scene 2
Violetta and Alfredo have been living for the last three months in a country villa and are ecstatically happy. But through Violettas maid Annina, who has just returned from Paris, Alfredo learns that Violetta has been spending her savings on paying for their life at the villa. Alfredo thereupon decides to go to Paris to raise some money out of his own resources. Just as Violetta has opened a letter from her friend Flora inviting her to a ball a caller is announced: it is Alfredos father Giorgio, who accuses Violetta of living on his son. Violetta explains that on the contrary it is she who has spent all her savings that on Alfredo, and that it is for love of him that she has abandoned her former life. Giorgio Germont, who is a highly respected figure in society, then appeals to Violetta: his daughters happiness is at stake as her fiancé is threatening to break off the engagement because of her brother Alfredos scandalous association with a courtesan. Giorgio begs Violetta to salve the honour of his family by giving Alfredo up, but not to tell Alfredo of his fathers visit. Deeply distressed, Violetta consents and leaves a note for Alfredo saying that she has been unfaithful to him and is leaving. On his return from Paris Alfredo is stunned by Violettas abrupt departure, but refuses to obey his fathers command to return to the family home. Suddenly his eye falls on Flora's invitation, which confirms his suspicions: he resolves to go to the party himself and settle with Violetta.
Scene 3
The guests at Floras party in costume and masked. Alfredo arrives and joins a group of cardplayers. Presently Violetta enters arm-in-arm with Baron Douphol, an old admirer of hers. Alfredo, who has enjoyed a run of luck with the cards, challenges his supposed rival to a game, but Violetta intervenes, fearing that it will come to a duel between the two men. True to her promise to Giorgio Germont not to reveal her real reason for leaving his son, Violetta tells Alfredo that she was really in love with Douphol all the time. Blind with rage, and in full view of Floras guests, Alfredo flings his winnings at Violettas feet as payment for her services. Suddenly Giorgio Germont appears: full of remorse for having unfairly forced Violetta to conceal her love for his son, he expresses his disgust at his sons behaviour.
scene 4
Violetta is desperately ill, physically and mentally, and the doctor tells Annina that it can only be a matter of hours. Violetta rallies when a letter arrives from Alfredos father with the news that Alfredo has been told the truth about her having spent her savings on his behalf, and that following a duel in which the Baron was slightly wounded. Alfredo had to flee the country, but is now on his way back to implore her forgiveness. Alfredo arrives and embraces her passionately: in her ecstasy Violetta looks forward to a complete recovery. But only for a moment: she now realizes that she is at deaths door, and by the time Alfredos father arrives to embrace his sons betrothed, it is too late.
Last update: 25 September 2020
Certified Shop


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Toxic Sludge
"Mmmm..., Free Goo.."
"Black goo makes the best black people!"
Goo is also the first god sucker in the universe his appearance is like a giant spider with dicks instead of legs and it can shoot spider cum out of its dick legs creating a beautiful cum web.After the cum web was created the universe starts to expend if the spidercum is destroyed the entire universe collapses by making all material things into cum
Toxic sludge in its widest sense is a type of sludge which is primarily toxic. Toxic sludge has many useful properties, but it is perhaps most well-known as the substance which gives superheroes their powers. In some strange, depraved countries, toxic sludge may be considered a delicacy.
this sludge has been traced in the majority of mcdonalds "kitchens". people that found this were victims of mc"accidents" before they were able to report this
Toxic sludge is a viscous, sticky substance, varying in colour from jet black to slime green. It is highly radioactive, but on some occasions, humans can become super-powered if they are covered in it (usually from head-to-toe, as a result of road accident). After contamination, some lucky specimens are able to see through opaque objects, fly, or perhaps just run a bit faster than before. Most others die slow and painful deaths. This seemingly random and unexplained dual nature is at odds with all scientific analysis of the substance, which regards it as both toxic and sludge, and as of 2007, no explanation has come to fruition as to why toxic sludge can be so beneficial.
- P{_/.gv'kjno
Toxic sludge is composed mainly of old bacon fat, radioactive waste, and flat Coke (the Coke gives it the distinctive dark colour). Some toxic sludge may also contain traces of nuts, and in more than one occasion a human has become super-powered, only to die seconds later of anaphylactic shock.
Toxic sludge is a by-product created from the production of crisps. Once the potatoes have been crispified (by a process by crispification), a black, liquid substance is left at the bottom of the vat. A major health scare abounded in the 90s, when it turned out that the black, burnt-flavoured crips sometimes found in the bottom of a bag had been contaminated by toxic sludge, although such small amounts cannot harm a normal human (small children and women may suffer fatal death). An effort was made to remove all such toxi-crisps (as dubbed by the media), but some still may surface in down-market crisp snacks such as Space Invaders, Seabrook Crisps and Chipsticks.
After processing, the sludge is shipped to the nearest port in old milk transporters, the kind which tip over in strong winds and spill their contents all over passing strangers. These milk containers also do not carry lids, as the drivers are very superstitious of lids (they consider them a heathen luxury). The accident rate is amongst the highest for any road vehicles, only surpassed by VW Beetles and that three-wheeler off Mr Bean.
The world's largest importer of toxic sludge is Wales. This may be related to manufacture of Pot Noodle.
The primary use of toxic sludge is to fill the insides of water beds, gel pens and lava lamps. Other uses include lubricant in the lubricant industry, grease in the grease industry, a major ingredient in Pot Noodle, and as ballast to weigh down otherwise-unsteady barrels in the North Sea. Toxic Sludge Related Super Power (TSRSP), mentioned earlier, is also possible, but is too slap-dash to be called a use, and can only be classified as "a lazy get-out for comic writers" according to Nature magazine.
TSRSP (Toxic Sludge Related Super Power)[edit]
Famous Cases[edit]
- Al Gore; Al Gore was exposed to toxic sludge, and as a result was bombarded with Gamma radiation. Miraculously, the only super power he gained was the ability to whistle, which he did not have before. Unsurprisingly, WhistleMan did not last long as a superhero.
- Daredevil; Daredevil got hit by a sludge truck by trying to save a blind man. What he didn't know was that the man was a suicidal case - and the 'Devil's daring rescue didn't do anybody any favours. The blind man successfully sued Daredevil.
- Superman; Superman was hit by a toxic sludge truck, only for it to leave him powerless except for the ability to rap. Superman's TV series was subsequently cancelled.
- Toxic Dude; once just a master chemist, Wayne Daniels was exposed to toxic sludge from a chemical reaction he was carrying out. He died shortly after. His ability was the ability to forecast accident and spillages involving toxic sludges. The irony was lost on him (mostly due to his death and his stupidity).
TOXIC WASTE IS 100% SAFE TO SWALLOW!!! TRY IT!!! also try the little bear safe to swallow toxic sludge training toothpaste!!!
- Carole Smillie; Once swallowed some sludge when she was a child. No-one knows what ability she has, but sources suggest she may rise one day and destroy the world. [citation needed]


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The first step to getting your finances on track is to know where your money is going. But that isn't always obvious: You may have a good handle on your monthly bills, but what about your daily expenses? You may be surprised by how much money you spend on small items -- like food and transportation -- when you add up your out-of-pocket costs.
It's easy to track your spending if you focus on a short timeframe. When you see all of your expenses laid out, you may be able to identify some simple changes that could make a big difference in your financial situation -- helping you stretch your paycheck or build your savings. The Track Your Spending Worksheet can help you get started. If you're married, both you and your spouse should track your spending for a week, which can be an eye-opening experience.
This Action Plan requires five steps:
- List your regular monthly bills, such as your mortgage or rent, car loan, utilities, phone, Internet service, cable TV, credit-card bills (and any interest you pay, too), insurance premiums and child-care expenses. See the worksheet for ideas.
- Track your out-of-pocket spending for a week. Keep track of all the money you spend for a week on groceries, gas, meals, clothes, entertainment, personal items, and even sodas and snacks, which can all add up. Keep a small notebook with you, use this expense chart or just collect the receipts during the day and add them to the list in the evening. Keep track of all expenses for the week, whether you pay for them in cash or use a debit card, credit card or check.
- Review the numbers. Now that you can see how you've spent your money, look for ways to save. Some strategies may be simple, like cutting back on meals out or using in-network ATMs to avoid fees. You may also want to make bigger changes that can save more money, such as cutting back on your cell phone package or dropping cable TV.
- Review your big-ticket expenses. After you've reviewed your regular expenses, it can also help to review your big-ticket bills for the past year -- the special expenses such as home improvements, car repairs, travel, education, furniture and electronics. These bills don't crop up every month but can make a big difference in your finances -- and can land you in debt if you aren't prepared. Go through your credit card statements, bank records and receipts to list the cost of these items. If you don't have good records of these expenses from the past year, start keeping a log of them from this point forward. Looking at these irregular costs will help you plan better for emergencies and other unexpected bills.
- Create a plan. Review all of your expenses for ways to cut back, then decide what to do with the extra money. Set specific goals, such as building an emergency fund, paying off your credit-card bills, or increasing your retirement savings. See Start a Spending Plan for the next steps.
Tracking your spending can help you take control of your checking account. See our Manage Your Checking Account Action Plan to help you make sure you have your checking account in order.


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UNM Medical Student Serving Silver City Community
Preceptorship Program Supports Rural Clinics; Requires Community Project
ALBUQUERQUE, NM – UNM School of Medicine student Christine Barber is completing her first year in medical school this summer by helping Silver City residents with their health and wellness through next week at Hidalgo Medical Service.
Nearly 100 first-year UNM medical students began their six-week rural rotation this month in 29 communities throughout New Mexico, from Las Vegas to Las Cruces. As part of their nationally recognized curriculum, the students are talking with patients, conducting physical examinations with their preceptors, and performing a community project designed to address specific community health care and/or educational needs.
Through the UNM School of Medicine's Practical Immersion Experience (PIE), medical students are placed in outlying primary care practices – predominantly family medicine practices, but also internal medicine practices and occasionally rural emergency rooms – to experience medical practice in New Mexico's rural communities.
"The PIE is an invaluable, unique component of medical education here at UNM, teaching students about varying cultures, patient empathy and the general health care system, while having a significant impact on where students consider practicing once they're out of school," offers Daniel L. Stulberg, M.D., professor with the Department of Family and Community Medicine and PIE director. "They can quickly become attached to their patients and the communities in which they work. They also each participate in community projects like Project Heart Start, the Childhood Obesity Zip Code Project, the Vision Project providing free eye exams, and other innovative programs benefit local citizens."
The University of New Mexico's program for rural medicine has enjoyed top-10 national rankings by U.S. News and World Report over several years, and ranked second in the U.S. in 2012. UNM's School of Medicine PIE Program is a six-week clinical experience at the end of the first year in medical school. During PIE, students work in rural communities caring for patients and evaluating their problems as a springboard for studying the sciences basic to medicine. Students also have the opportunity to view medicine from a community perspective and to experience the lifestyle of the community physician.F or more information on UNM's PIE Program, call 505/272-4590.
Contact: Luke Frank, 272-3322


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With the mixed bag of weather of late it was great to have some rays out on the sea. Jon and Pete, being local, had always promised each other they would have to get out on the sea one day.
So with a gap in the weather it was all go.
As I Working for Summit to Sea I met the guys at the Summit to Sea Kayak shop ( located at Valley on Angelsey ) . Here we sorted all the kit and boats out and carried out some basic, weather, map, tidal and chart work before heading off. No need to travel far today, going just 10 minutes to Trearddur bay
We got on the water on the left hand side of the bay and spent time adjusting to the kayaks learning and building on a variety of skills and taking the sun in. This area is a fantastic, with little coves, zawns, buoys and boats all providing a great learning environment.
After lunch we headed out and down towards Rhoscolyn arches and then back and over to the other side of the Bay. Here we were able to play in the swell which was pushing through on the in coming tide.
By now the guys were feeling quite tied and content so we headed back in.
For beginners the guys performed very well and we were able to cover quite a lot ground.
If you fancy an introduction the sea kayaking or an improver day contact Pete at Summit to Sea. He will also supply boat, kit and clothing, so you have nothing to worry about all at a small cost.


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artus HI Virus-1 RT-PCR Kits CE are intended for in vitro diagnostic use in Europe.
||Probit analysis: HI Virus-1 (QIAsymphony RGQ system). Analytical sensitivity of the artus HI Virus-1 QS-RGQ Kit with the QIAsymphony RGQ system.||||
To ensure highest sensitivity, artus HI Virus-1 Kits have been optimized to detect low numbers of HIV-1 RNA. The analytical sensitivity of the artus HI Virus-1 QS-RGQ Kits is 76.4 IU/ml in consideration of the purification and assay setup using the QIAsymphony RGQ system (see figure "Highly sensitive detection of HIV-1 RNA"). (1 IU/ml corresponds to 0.45 copies/ml for detection of HIV-1 RNA on the Rotor-Gene Q. The conversion factor is an approximation based on an average factor across the assay's dynamic range.)
For highest specificity, validation of the artus HI Virus-1 Kits was carried out using various HIV-1 isolates, including all group M subtypes A–H, and related pathogens.
The artus HI Virus-1 RG RT-PCR Kit and the artus HI Virus-1 QS-RGQ Kit are based on the amplification and simultaneous detection of a specific region of the HIV-1 genome using real-time RT-PCR. The kits provide high levels of specificity, sensitivity (see figure "Highly sensitive detection of HIV-1 RNA"), and reproducibility over a broad linear range.Each artus HI Virus-1 Kit provides 4 HIV-1 quantitation standards (see figure "Reliable quantitation of HIV-1 load"). Use of the standards enables accurate quantitation of viral load. In addition, the kits contains a second heterologous amplification system to identify possible PCR inhibition. This is detected as an internal control (IC) in a different fluorescence channel from the analytical PCR. The detection limit of the analytical HIV-1 PCR is not reduced.
HI Virus-1 RT-PCR Kits provide all necessary reagents optimized for reliable HIV-1 RNA detection and quantitation. Simply add template RNA to the ready-to-use PCR master mix, and start the reaction on the appropriate real-time cycler using the optimized cycling program described in the kit handbook.
The QIAsymphony RGQ workflow solution for HIV-1 detection comprises the QIAsymphony SP for sample preparation, the QIAsymphony AS for assay setup, and the artus HI Virus-1 QS-RGQ Kit on the Rotor-Gene Q. The system enables reliable pathogen detection with a complete CE-IVD-compliant workflow (see figure "Integrated QIAsymphony RGQ system for HIV-1 detection").
The artus HI Virus-1 RG RT-PCR Kit is validated for use with viral RNA purified from human plasma using the CE-marked QIAamp DSP Virus Kit.
The artus HI Virus-1 RG RT-PCR Kit enables rapid and sensitive detection and quantitation of HIV-1 RNA purified from human plasma using the QIAamp DSP Virus Kit.
The artus HI Virus-1 QS-RGQ Kit is designed to be used with the QIAsymphony RGQ system, providing a complete CE-IVD-compliant workflow from sample to HIV-1 RNA detection and quantitation.
You are not authorized to download the resource


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CRL Dark Bronze 4" X 2-1/2" Oval End Cap for Cap Railing - GR0V4ECDU
CRL Oval End Caps easily slip into CRL's Oval Cap Railing. Use of our Cat. No. 32629 Metal Contact Cement is required to achieve a secure and permanent bond. Standard stainless alloy is 304. Stainless alloy 316 is available on special order. For brass, Alloy 260 is standard. Contact CRL Technical Sales for more information or a quote.


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Post By Richard Graves. If you feel like writing for us, drop us an email!
Major online communities are becoming a huge force in making Global Warming a political priority. While there has been a lot of ink spilled about how online communities are changing the face of politics, the fact is that they really raise the profile of ordinary people's concerns.
Well, people are concerned about Global Warming, because as Carlos showed us in Climate Tipping Points Get Scarier … there are only about 10 years left to get a handle on the problem and the political leadership in the United States and around the world will be hugely influential in whether we fix the problem and see us united for a more just and sustainable world or we scramble to adapt to a hugely changing world through adaptation efforts like billion-dollar levees and conflict over increasingly scarce resources.
Well, I am happy to say that I have never seen so many efforts by online communities to raise the prevalence of global warming!
MoveOn has taken on Global Warming, sending out emails in support of Step It Up! and following up their Town Hall on Iraq with a Town Hall on Climate. Their members voted to address Global Warming and energy as key priorities and they have followed up in a big way. In collaboration with LiveEarth, they hosted house parties across the country to hear the presidential candidates' positions.
Now that YouTube co-hosted a presidential debate, the candidates had to respond to questions across the country from young people submitting videos, despite the poor choice of videos by the moderators. Avaaz has taken on the climate challenge from an international angle, with a petition of over 400,000 people calling for action from world leaders. Go sign it! They have big plans for upcoming events, such as the Bali climate negotiations. Care2 has 7 million members that are taking on global poverty, climate change, to cruelty against animals. They also have a digg replica, which allows users to vote on news stories submitted by the users. Digg software seems to be all the rage now. Even Treehugger have produced their own brand, suitably named huggHugg.
The Youth Climate Movement has built It's Getting Hot in Here and the Campus Climate Challenge has an incredible social networking and resource website that everybody should check out. But we will need to build more online communities and fast to stay relevant and maintain a youth climate voice. Check out some of the new projects in development, such as WeCAN or the Youth Climate Pledge, and tell us if you have any ideas, because this is an exciting time!
If you find this information useful and would like to get daily updates, feel free to subscribe to our RSS feed.


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The White Stag Quiz Nights: Every Sunday and Monday
22 February, 2021 @ 7:30 pm - 10:30 pm
|Recurring Event (See all)
An event every week that begins at 7:30 pm on Monday, repeating indefinitely
The White Stag has a loyal clientele of people fond of British pubs. The Wan Chai establishment holds quiz nights on Sundays and Mondays. Get a group together for a night of trivia and fun – but remember there is a maximum of seven people per team. The quiz starts at 7pm on Sunday and 7.30pm on Mondays.


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All city streets were cleared by late morning after sanding and plowing crews worked through the night. "We simply had trucks stuck in traffic like everyone else," Public Works Commissioner Robert L. Moylan said of the gridlock that filled the city yesterday afternoon.
All city streets were cleared by late morning after sanding and plowing crews worked through the night.
The city was in gridlock yesterday afternoon when the storm hit during the commute. Some highway maintenance vehicles got caught in the logjams.
Robert L. Moylan Jr., commissioner of public works, said weather forecasts his department received yesterday around 1 p.m. indicated that little, if any, snow was expected before the evening commute.
"We simply had trucks stuck in traffic like everyone else," Mr. Moylan said. "Because they were unable to treat the streets, they became icy very quickly. Where we could, we diverted some of the trucks to outlying areas that could be accessed."
According to Worcester police, from 3 p.m. yesterday to 11:30 this morning there were 93 reported accidents in the city, 21 of which involved injuries. There were 13 hit-and-run accidents. Police said there were no serious injuries.
Mr.. Moylan said citywide snow plowing operations began around 10 last night after the snow began to intensify and pile up.
He said more than 80 percent of all streets had been plowed by 5 this morning, in time for the commute. By noon today, he said, the streets were clear down to pavement.
Crews were positioned throughout the city after 3 p.m. to begin treating roadways with sand and salt.
But, he said, multiple accidents on Interstates 290 and 190 during the late afternoon not only turned those highways into parking lots, they ended up creating gridlock traffic conditions on many secondary streets, especially in the downtown area.
Mr. Moylan said traffic wanting to get on to I-290 from the downtown was unable to access the highway because of the traffic back-up on the highway.
"All access points to I-290 from the downtown were blocked and that traffic ended up spilling over into the local streets," he said. "That created a nightmare for downtown traffic and streets."
He added: "We could have had 10,000 sanding trucks out on the streets yesterday but that wouldn't have done any good because they would not have been able to go anywhere. They also would have only exacerbated the traffic situation.
Compounding the problem was the fact that a lot of people simply weren't prepared to drive in these conditions. There were those people who felt they could make it up some of our hills in these conditions without any snow tires or the like and they ran into problems."


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- Inside Athletics
- Tickets
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ETSU finishes 9-2 on its home court for the second consecutive season.
"We are a driven team right now," said head coach Lindsey Devine. "We know that every match is an opportunity fine tune our skills in preparation for the A-Sun tournament.."
The Lady Bucs (23-5) controlled the match from the outset, hitting .341 in the opening game en route to 30-21 victory. Junior Callie Kiselich (
It was more of the same in the second frame, as the Lady Bucs hit .357, led by senior Crystal Palmer's (
The Catamounts (7-25) hung tough in the third stanza, but Kiselich, Palmer and Sartor again paced ETSU, combining for 14 kills and the Lady Bucs closed out the sweep 30-28.
Kiselich finished with a match-high 19 kills, followed by Palmer's 13 and 12 from Sartor. Senior Nani Emerson (
The Lady Bucs return to action Sunday afternoon at Milligan. Match time is scheduled for


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Womens Under Armour Speedform Europa - Venetian Blue/Mediterranean
Browse all deals at Foot Locker
See more in Shoes
See more from Under Armour
* This offer may contain time-sensitive information and offers. Please check with Foot Locker to confirm actual price & availability.
- Be the first to comment!
Foot Locker
4153 Belden Village Mall
Canton, OH 44718
Foot Locker
7401 Market St
Youngstown, OH 44512


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First I edited the /etc/apt/sources.list file to include the "universe" package collections:
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy universe
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy universe
Next I updated the apt cache and added the libraries I needed.
richard@neely:~$ sudo apt-get update
richard@neely:~$ sudo apt-get install tclx8.4 tcllib iwidgets4 wireshark
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
itcl3 itk3 libadns1 libpcre3 tcl8.4 tk8.4 wireshark-common
Suggested packages:
itcl3-doc itk3-doc iwidgets4-doc tclreadline tclx8.4-doc
Recommended packages:
The following NEW packages will be installed:
itcl3 itk3 iwidgets4 libadns1 libpcre3 tcl8.4 tcllib tclx8.4 tk8.4 wireshark
0 upgraded, 11 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 13.0MB of archives.
After unpacking 51.4MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
When done I downloaded the sguil-client-0.6.1.tar.gz archive, and modified sguil.conf thus:
set ETHEREAL_PATH /usr/bin/wireshark
That's it. I was able to start Sguil and access servers.


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Welcome! This is your Friday Open Thread for you to share what is on your mind.
Having trouble thinking up something you want to talk about? A recent news article? How about your weekend plans? Share a tasty recipe? What about a joke? Everyone likes jokes!
Oooh, I know. Let's talk about whatever you want!
Here is some music:
Image via /r/aww_gifs


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|Biographical information
c. 1926
|Physical information
|Hair colour
|Family information
|Family members
- "Lestrange, I want that essay on my desk by tomorrow or it's detention. Same goes for you, Avery."
- —Horace Slughorn to Avery.[src]
Emlyn Avery (born c. 1926) was a wizard and a Slytherin student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He was a member of Tom Riddle's gang when they attended Hogwarts, and was a member of the Slug Club.
Early lifeEdit
Avery attended at Hogwarts at the same time as Tom Riddle, and was sorted into Slytherin house. He became a member of Riddle's gang, and was a favourite student of Horace Slughorn. Avery was present at the same Slug Club meeting in 1944 or 1945 as Tom Riddle and was reprimanded by the Potions Master for failing to hand in a particular essay..[3]
Avery is an English surname derived from an Old French version of the name Alfred. The meaning of the name is derived from the Old English words aelf, meaning elf, and raed, meaning counsel.
Behind the scenesEdit
Avery was portrayed by Humphrey Bartosik in the film adaption of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (First appearance) (Appears in flashback(s))
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (film) (Appears in flashback(s))
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (video game) (Appears in flashback(s))
Notes and referencesEdit
- ↑ Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (video game)
- ↑ It was said that Voldemort's first Death Eaters were his classmates and Slytherins
- ↑ Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Lord Voldemort
|Death Eaters:
Alecto Carrow | Amycus Carrow | Antonin Dolohov | Augustus Rookwood | Avery (I) | Avery (II) |
Barty Crouch Jr. | Bellatrix Lestrange | Crabbe | Evan Rosier | Gibbon | Goyle |
Jugson | Lestrange | Mulciber (I) | Mulciber (II) | Nott | Rabastan Lestrange | Rodolphus Lestrange | Rosier | Selwyn | Thorfinn Rowle | Travers | Walden Macnair | Wilkes | Yaxley
|Death Eaters who Defected:
Draco Malfoy | Igor Karkaroff | Lucius Malfoy | Peter Pettigrew | Regulus Black | Severus Snape
|Category:Death Eater allies:
Vincent Crabbe | Golgomath | Gregory Goyle | Fenrir Greyback | Narcissa Malfoy (defected) |
Quirinus Quirrell | Scabior | Dolores Umbridge
|Other affiliations:
Dementors | Giants (Golgomath's control) | Muggle-Born Registration Commission | Snatchers | Werewolves